8. Major foreign-policy achievements in his first term (killing Bin Laden)

9. Little charisma by his likely opponent

Um, "no social unrest"? Does he mean rioting? Well, the public's in a riotous mood.

"Major domestic policy changes?" Let me explain something, that's because such changes are usually popular. ObamaCare has been unpopular since it was snuck through the Senate in the dead of night and has only become more so.

Shouldn't this indicator actually flip the other way when the domestic policy changes in question are extremely unpopular?

"No major scandals" -- We'll see. He's probably right because the one thing the media can definitely do is refuse to report a scandal.

"No major foreign-policy failures" -- This one's debatable.

"Little charisma by his likely opponent" -- Going to take that one to the bank? I assume he means Mitt Romney, but the problem there is 1, Mitt Romney is sorta growing on me, personality wise, 2, Romney appears to be a stronger-than-usual challenger, and 3, it's not even super-likely to be Romney, given Perry is leading him and not by a little bit.

Lichtman claims he doesn't know what the short-term economic situation will look like in 2012, so he can't assign that one either way. Oddly, he is a precognitive psychic on seeing the future and knowing that Obama will not see Gunwalker blossom into a major scandal, and that Obama's opponent will have low charisma.

He also knows that, say, Libya won't blow up in Obama's face. Or Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or... Iran.

But on the economy? Gee, who could guess on that one, huh?

Allah writes:

All of which assumes, of course, that this will be an ordinary election like the past seven were. Maybe it will; maybe there’s no such thing as an extraordinary election. But the state of the economy is surely extraordinary, poised as it is for a double-dip, and unemployment is extraordinary compared to any other era over the past 75 years. That is to say, we’re assuming that these “Keys” are equally weighted in election after election, no matter the circumstances, when basic awareness of the current political climate suggests the two economic Keys will be weighted way more heavily than any of the others.

There are keys Licthman could have never anticipated -- like a $16 trillion dollar debt, which we're adding to at the rate of $1.5 trillion per year.

How about the US credit downgrade? Unprecedented, so you can't even include it as a predictive variable.